Good vs Great Developers: What Sets Them Apart

Advanced programming skills are one of many measures to consider when building a tech team. A great developer will mentor new hires during onboarding , optimize your development workflows, and enhance communication across departments.

According to Statista, you can hire approximately 25.6 million software developers worldwide. The number of developers has increased by 20% in the last 5 years and will continue to grow. Within this immense talent pool, understanding this difference is essential to identifying the right candidate. While remote recruitment offers vast potential, you must effectively target your hiring time and resources to avoid overwhelming your team. 

Let’s analyze the key factors that separate good developers from great ones in a distributed work environment.

This guide will cover:

1. Key differences between good and great developers
2. Essential qualities to seek in top-tier programmers for distributed teams
3. Continuous learning strategies for team upskilling

Good vs Great Developers: How to Learn the Differences

If you need more than a good coder for your business, what additional skills must you consider to spot the right candidate? 

The qualities of a good developer are the first step towards a business’ success. However, if you are running a scaling remote business, you need to consider not only skilled developers but also their dedication to work and ability to connect with your team. 

Let’s map out 8 qualities that make a difference between the qualities of a good and great developer:

1. Problem-solving

While good developers can solve problems and fix bugs, great developers can take care of complex issues, think of innovative solutions, and adjust the workflow for the future. For example, you are running a growing e-commerce business and just launched your own selling platform for your products and services. While a good developer is the one who fixes the bugs to keep the flow smooth, a great developer is the one who does deep research to find innovative solutions to optimize the process and create synergy with the sales and marketing teams. 

2. Communication

Great developers understand the importance of communication in a business, both with clients and team members. Instead of only focusing on technicalities, a great developer always puts extra effort into ensuring everyone is on the same page. When you present a project to new clients and stakeholders, you want someone able to translate complex technical solutions to a non-general audience and back up your decision-making. 

3. Learning

Great developers are always eager to learn because they know that innovation means process optimization. You’ll often find them exploring new coding tools, reading about emerging technologies, and experimenting with different working methods. They don’t wait for formal training sessions; instead, they actively seek out opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills. This constant drive to improve and adapt sets them apart in the fast-changing world of technology.

4. Attention to Detail

Missing small details over time can lead to massive technical debt in the future. Good developers focus on the present solution, while great developers pay attention to details to ensure code functionality in the long run.

5. Adaptability

Great developers quickly adapt and adjust to new team members and situations. This skill is fundamental if you want to hire a full-time developer to run your team. Adaptability means that your developer will better understand how to include new hires in the current workflow, adjust performance based on concrete possibilities, limit budget expenses, and so on. If you hire a good coder who lacks adaptability skills, you will risk more issues related to onboarding or teamwork in the future.

6. Empathy

Understanding co-workers’ needs and priorities is essential for a smooth workflow. A great developer can observe the team and understand when to push or when to slow down. Furthermore, this skill is fundamental when attending meetings with different parties. An empathetic person can listen to the other and understand how to best adjust the tone to deliver the message. As much for communication, this attention to team dynamics and people’s responses will help you scale your business over time.

7. Ownership

Everyone makes risky decisions and mistakes. While a good developer will limit the decision-making to avoid errors, a great developer is fearless in owning and admitting mistakes. They are also not afraid to try out new solutions to improve team performance. 

8. Leadership

Finally, great developers have leadership skills, as they are always willing to help and support the team. A good developer directs the team, while a great developer ensures everyone is part of the project and contributes with different skills.

To recap, how do you distinguish between good vs great developers?

How to Identify the Great Developers? 3 Tips

The bottom line of the previous differences is the attitude. A great developer is one who is always willing to give something more to your project, not only in terms of product development but also in terms of team dynamics. 

How can you identify a great developer among candidates during the hiring process? 

Let’s focus on 3 essential qualities that set the differences between good and great developers and can help you in the selection process:

1. Intuition for Problem-Solving and Software Architecture

Besides being a skilled programmer, a great developer completely understands the different development stages. This more comprehensive understanding provides the right intuition for problem-solving rather than generalizing the problem and missing the unique issues related to your product. This understanding is essential, especially in a remote and distributed team where developers might work at different times. A great developer will understand how to make communication more straightforward by working on coding scripts in terms of service implementation and internal workflow.

ProTip for Remote Recruitment:

Make a case scenario where the solution involves understanding the complete process behind your services or product. For example, you are running an e-commerce company selling solid shampoo and conditioner. Your brand is growing, and you added a new line to your online shop. Furthermore, you partnered with other brands to become the most supplied platform for sustainable hair and skin care. Your previous developer had to fix several bugs because of the added products so your users could buy everything smoothly. However, the layout was very confusing, and you ended up losing customers. Ask your candidates what they would have done differently and if they focus only on technical issues or the quality of your website.

2. Communication Skills and Personal Humor 

Communication in remote teams is essential, especially among developers. They must be able to communicate with different departments and coordinate different stages of production and development. For this reason, it is essential to select a candidate familiar with remote communication tools who can leave clear instructions and procedures for other departments, like sales or marketing.  

ProTip for Remote Recruitment: 

When you provide a code test, you can also give an assignment to report the result to the sales and marketing department to adjust their campaigns and strategy. Based on the clarity of the report, you will have a clear picture of your candidate’s communication abilities.

3. Work-Life Balance

As much as you are looking for a dedicated candidate, you don’t want someone obsessed with work. Or at least, you want to avoid creating an atmosphere of competition where the other team members feel they have to work overtime to be recognized. Rather than people working extra hours, you want people to care about what they are doing. The balance between quality and quantity is essential in a remote team, and you don’t want a developer in burnout after 3 months.

ProTip for Remote Recruitment:

Ask your new candidate about hobbies and activities outside work, their families or recent vacations. This will help you understand not only their type of work-life balance but also if they can be a good cultural and personality fit with your existing team.

Tools and Resources for Developer Assessment

How do you assess and identify great developers to optimize the hiring process? Alongside human intuition, it is important to have a set of tools to measure the quality and originality of code and resources to understand the candidate’s personality: 

Coding Assessment Tools:

1. Codeaid is a coding test platform that helps recruiters test code’s originality and functionality. 
2. HackerRank is a developer skills platform for technical skills assessment capability and evaluating candidates through customizable job role-based assessments. 
3. Codility platform offers a pre-screening of candidates and tools to conduct interactive interviews. 
4. CodeSignal hiring tool is designed to evaluate interviews based on each candidate’s profile.
5. CoderPad allows screening and interviewing software engineers with gamified tech assessments and live pair-programming interviews. 

Soft Skills Evaluation:

1. Behavioral Interview Questions & Situational Analysis: These types of questions can sound a bit vague, but they are fundamental to understanding how the candidate will interact with your team and approach possible issues. Questions like ‘How do you translate a new technical feature to clients and stakeholders?’ or ‘How do you deal with conflicts between sales and development departments?’ are key to selecting candidates who will be a better fit with your team and goals. 
2. Role-Playing Exercises: When closing the hiring process, conducting interviews with other team members and simulating possible scenarios and interactions is better. Role-playing exercises are a great tool to assess verbal and written communication, as well as to understand if the candidate has a collaborative mindset. At this stage, you can ask questions like ‘Can you describe when you rely on other team members’ skills?’ or ‘How do you deal with late deliveries?’ will help you understand how easy the onboarding for your new candidate will be.

Continuous Learning Platforms:

1. Online Courses and Tutorials: Working in a tech business means constantly staying updated with new tools, methods, and innovative solutions. For this reason, it is essential to support your dev team with opportunities to expand their skill set and be prepared to include new or more sophisticated solutions in your workflow. 
2. Webinars, Workshops and Conferences: In the same vein, conferences, workshops and webinars are effective solutions for keeping your developers updated. Furthermore, they are also a way to present your business and expand your network.
3. Open Source Projects: Most coding languages and frameworks are open sources, and developers can often ask questions or give feedback to the community. Encouraging these types of activities is a way to explore new possibilities for your business and showcase your developer’s abilities.

Continuous Learning Strategies for Team Upskilling and Great Developers

When you run a small remote business that is scaling over time, fostering a workplace where your team can grow and learn new skills is fundamental. The point is not only to always check if your team is satisfied but also to encourage new ideas and strategies, providing tools and training to support them. 

Here are 5 core continuous learning strategies for team upscaling:

1. Skill-Based Approach

A skill-based approach encourages the development of a specific set of skills that you can immediately apply in your work setting. In other words, you focus on practice rather than theory. Once you establish the individual abilities of your team members, it is easier to define roles and responsibilities to foster effective collaborations. If any member of your team can focus on improving their skill set, it will be easier for them to understand how to collaborate while improving their professional role. Especially in a remote team, a skill-based approach will help you to improve communication and implement your workflow over time.

2. Feedback and Mistake-Free Environment 

When you hire great developers, there will be a point when they know better than you how to adjust local strategies and policies to implement the workflow. And you should always listen to them and give their suggestions a try. As a team leader, it is your role to create a feedback and mistake-free environment so that all your team members feel free to contribute to your company’s growth. Continuous learning is also for you, not only your team.

3. Training and Networking

Even with remote employees, providing opportunities for additional training and networking is essential. If your team members have the chance to improve their skill set, they will be more motivated to promote your product and find new innovative solutions for your business.

The Role of Company Culture in Nurturing Great Developers

Building a solid company culture is essential for any company. Especially in remote teams, lack of company culture can lead to toxic competition or burnout – which will slow you down and impact your overall performance over time. 

• Supportive Environment: A feedback-friendly, mistake-free culture is essential to foster innovation and creative solutions. If your team members are afraid of mistakes, they will never have the courage to think of alternative solutions or innovate the existing process. 
• Diversity and Inclusion: More than words, diversity and inclusion are effective strategies for remote teams. By hiring worldwide, you can create an environment where your employees can learn from each other and improve the existing workflow with different inputs. 
• Recognition and Reward: Finally, it is essential to create a space for recognition and rewards. In a remote setting, you can open a separate channel to allow employees to complement each other and celebrate collective and individual success.

Conclusion

Problem-solving, communication, learning, attention to detail, adaptability, empathy, ownership, and leadership are the main traits you need to look for to distinguish good from great developers during the hiring process. While a good developer is a reliable coder, a great developer is a team player. We can help you find great developers and collaborative team members! Our recruiters are well trained in navigating the global pool and are the best to support you during the interview process. Call us to find the perfect match for your team!

Luciana Pirk

With a decade of experience in remote work, Luciana Pirk is the Content Manager at DistantJob. She combines her expertise in SEO copywriting with leadership skills in managing remote teams. Luciana is dedicated to promoting remote work, focusing on mental health and enjoying activities like meditation and yoga in her free time.